


Flesh Beneath

by Isagel



Series: Breaking Skin [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Blood, Community: kink_bingo, Consensual Kink, Dom/sub, Dominance, F/M, Femdom, Kink Negotiation, Knifeplay, Painplay, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Scarification, Scars, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:12:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are never any scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh Beneath

Steve Rogers may be a supersoldier, but he is still human. He relies on strength and speed and the protection of his shield to avoid being hit, but if you can get behind his defenses, if you can be quick enough, smart enough, precise enough at exactly the right moment, he can still be hurt. He can still bleed.

It can even happen by accident.

Or, no, it's instinct, rather. They're moving so fast, the dance of blows and kicks and blocks flowing between them at a level beyond what their conscious thoughts can keep up with, and if Steve is holding back it isn't showing, which means Natasha can't hold back at all, and when she feints and he twists the wrong way, his body opening up like a target, unfurling for her into that brief, soft moment of vulnerability that makes her awareness sing with the knowledge of _now_ , with the imperative of _strike_ , she forgets for a fraction of a second to pull the sweep of her arm, and the blade of the knife in her hand may not slice as deep as it would have if she'd been fighting to kill, but it does cut him.

She hears him hiss, a sharp intake of breath at the unexpected pain, and she's dropping her knife to the mat, straightening up and raising her hands with open palms to signal surrender, even as he jumps back from the thrust she would have made to follow through, if this had been real.

The blood, though, looks real enough, spreading along a six-inch cut in Steve's t-shirt, seeping red through the white cotton.

“Oh, fuck, I'm sorry,” she says, rushing over to him, reaching for the hem of his shirt to pull it up and examine the wound. “Are you all right?”

The cut isn't bad, only slightly more than skin deep, a diagonal line across his midriff, almost parallel with one of his lower ribs. Her impulse is to press her hand against it, to stem the bleeding, shield him with her skin where his is torn, but, really, the injury isn't severe enough to warrant that. There is a first aid cabinet in the corner of the gym. She should go find him a bandage, some disinfectant. That would be far more efficient.

“Looks like you got me good, there,” Steve says, and when she glances up at his face there is a faint smile quirking his lips, a bit self-deprecating. “I'll never get the hang of predicting your next move.”

She smiles up at him, trying for teasing. He's fine. They're fine. She doesn't have to worry.

“Somebody has to keep you on your toes, Cap.”

His face is already flushed, from the sparring, but his cheeks seem suddenly redder, heated in a way they weren't, before. He licks at his lower lip.

“You do a good job of that,” he says. “I... I like that.”

Her palm is splayed across his abdomen, just beneath the cut. She can feel his breath stutter, inhale and exhale, hard muscles shifting. His skin is warm, slicked with sweat.

She pulls her hand away.

Her mouth is too dry.

“I'll get you something to clean that up,” she says.

Her feet aren't moving.

“It's okay, Natasha,” Steve says, hurrying to reassure her. “One of the benefits of the serum. This will have healed up in a day. Give it seventy-two hours, there won't even be a scar.” He pauses, a heartbeat too long. He's looking away, just over her shoulder. “There are never any scars.”

She can't quite read his tone, but...

“That's a bad thing?”

He shrugs.

“I guess not. I mean, of course it isn't. I'm grateful, for the healing, I know what a gift that is, and there's so much I can do to help people that I wouldn't be able to do without it.”

“But?” 

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a nervous movement, bordering on fidgeting while he's standing like this, almost at attention. She wants suddenly to hold him still, to secure him against whatever is moving through his head. It's not a new want, but the fierceness of it now is almost dizzying.

There is a moment when she thinks he won't answer her, but then he says:

“All the things I've been through, sometimes it seems like they ought to have left marks. Sometimes I look in the mirror and it feels like a mockery that there aren't any. The war, all those battles, the people I fought them with... There should be something to say it was all real, that I can't just forget it.”

Oh.

Steve looks... Steve is looking the kind of manfully stoic he looks when he is trying to be Captain America more than Steve Rogers and not quite succeeding. It makes her want to strip the persona away, peel it off down to the bone of what he truly is, make him give that soft, unflickering strength up to her, exposed and bright and hers to care for. She thinks perhaps they are approaching a point where he'd let her, but she hasn't dared to take the step yet. She can't mess this one up.

“Scars don't have to be on the outside,” she says. “If everyone can't see them that doesn't make them any less real.”

She gives his arm a brief squeeze of reassurance, and he leans after her touch as it slips away. She has to fight the urge to give him more. She feels his eyes following her as she walks over to the cabinet where the first aid kit lives and sorts through it for the right supplies. The sweat from their fight is beginning to cool on her skin, and she feels cold in her tank top, goose bumps breaking out on her arms. The room seems empty and vast around her, Steve's body behind her a beacon of warmth she could find blindfolded.

“Everything is so different here,” Steve says, to the quiet room, to her back, “since I woke up. It's easy to start thinking maybe everything before was just a dream. Maybe it only happened inside my head. I know it didn't, but...” Natasha slows her movements, pretends she hasn't already found what she's looking for. If it's easier for him to say whatever is on his mind when she isn't watching him, there's no reason she shouldn't give him that. “Sometimes, I wake up in the morning, and the cuts and bruises from our latest mission are gone, the marks you gave me the last time we sparred are gone. And I think, maybe I dreamed that too, maybe I made that up.”

She says it without thinking, instinct like the thrust of her knife:

“Then maybe I should make sure to keep you marked.”

And, damn, she should have turned around for this, after all, because Steve makes a noise, a quick exhalation as though the air's been punched right out of him, and she wants to see that, the first, unguarded expression on his face that comes with a sound like that, wants to see his every reaction, soak up every little thing he gives.

When she does turn around, he is looking at the floor, face in shadow.

“Maybe you should,” he says.

Tentative, the way Captain America never is. She wants to tilt his chin up, wants...

That is the moment when both their phones start beeping and it turns out to be time to suit up.

* * *

When she rings the doorbell of Steve's little Brooklyn apartment, she still isn't sure she's going to do this. She knows she wants to – it's all she's wanted, these past two days, all she's thought about in the downtime between missions, turning the idea over and over in her head, the possibility of giving this to Steve, the possibility that he would welcome it nestled like a warm weight of anticipation in her belly.

It makes her nervous, though, how much she wants it. How much she wants Steve, wants that side of him who likes to be kept on his toes, who wishes for marks and bruises, who bends his head and blushes, so fucking beautifully. There have been others – other men, other women – who've made her eager to give what she aches to give him, but it was always just for a night, for a week she could afford to spare, for brief hours when paths crossed and nothing else demanded her attention. When there were names, they were rarely real; when there were emotions, they had value only in the moment. There was never anyone she trusted. Never anyone she wanted to keep. 

When she thinks about Steve like that, about having him the way she had those others, she knows it would break her if she ever had to give him up again. If she marked him, she would want the marks to be forever.

And the thing is, for people like her, when the books are balanced, there is never enough left over at the bottom of the page to pay the cost of forever.

Or at least that's how it used to be. But maybe now, maybe since Loki, maybe since she bled for these ridiculous, incredible people Fury calls the Avengers and they bled for her, since she let herself trust them, since the world somehow began to put its trust in them, in her along with them, maybe now the sum total of what she is can be calculated differently. Maybe she is someone now with what it takes to keep, to hold and care for and own. She wants that to be true. She needs that to be true, because she needs Steve, and no one should be allowed to bring him any less than that. 

But she isn't sure. Standing here, on his doorstep, she still isn't sure.

Then he opens the door.

“Natasha,” he says, surprised. Confused but smiling, happy to see her even if he has no idea why she's there. She forgets, how stunning he is, what it does to her, that warm, golden honesty of expression. He would be honest all the way down, she thinks. It almost hurts to imagine. “Come in.”

He steps aside for her, and she moves into the space he yields. He shuts the door behind her.

They stand there, facing each other in the narrow hallway, and the silence drags on for too long. Somewhere inside the apartment, she can hear a clock ticking. Old-fashioned analogue, she pictures it powered by a pendulum – downswing, upswing, every tick inevitable. In the small space, she is aware of every part of Steve's body, the height and breadth of him, the heat of his skin through his clothes. She is aware of her own skin, of her pulse-beat, of the tightness in her chest and the lace of her bra against her nipples. Steve wets his lips, opens his mouth to speak.

She isn't sure, but it doesn't matter. Standing here with him, she knows that she's passed the point where she could choose not to act.

“Don't move,” she says.

Steve's mouth closes around whatever he was about to say. He doesn't move, but his posture changes, his back that little bit straighter, his shoulders that little bit more relaxed. Natasha steps closer, steps all the way in. She raises her hands and starts unbuttoning his plaid cotton shirt, pulls it free of his khaki slacks. Her movements are steady, efficient. Steve does nothing to stop her. 

She rucks up his undershirt. The cut from her knife is almost gone, just like he said it would be, nothing left but a smooth, pink line of scar tissue along the curve of his ribcage. If she'd waited until tomorrow, there would have been no mark at all.

She lays her hand against his chest, traces the scar with the pad of her thumb. She hears his breathing falter, stop and start.

“All healed,” he says. Trying to sound as if this is normal, as if there's nothing strange in her touching him like this. As if it doesn't affect him. He's not succeeding very well. “You really don't have to worry.”

She drags her thumb back along the cut, scrapes it lightly, lightly with the tip of her nail. Allows the urge to scratch to flow through her, make her mouth water even as she holds it back.

“Do you want it to be healed?” she says. She dips her free hand into the pocket of her leather jacket. The knife she keeps there is a switchblade, bone handle body-warm in her palm. She flicks it open, lets the blade spring up between them for him to see. “It doesn't have to be.” She looks up at him, at his down-turned face, at his long lashes shadowing his eyes as he looks at the knife. His lips are so red, half parted. She wants to taste them. “I could make it stay,” she says. “I could keep it there, for as long as you wanted. My mark on you, right here, every day when you wake up and every night when you go to bed. I could make sure it never fades. If that's something you want. If that's something you want from me.”

His nostrils flare. She still can't see his eyes. 

If she's misjudged him, she doesn't know what she will do. She never needed a home before, but she has one now, with the Avengers. She should know better than to risk it.

Perhaps he sees clearer than she does, perhaps he knows she still can't be what he deserves.

He looks at her, eyes so very blue and earnest.

“Please,” he says.

* * *

“You know it would hurt?” she asks him, not much later, sitting opposite him at his kitchen table. He's made her coffee, from the top-of-the-line espresso machine Tony insisted he needed, out of place among the retro furnishings of his apartment. Her fingers are toying with the rim of her saucer, restless to touch again, although she knows that talking needs to come first. “Not just the cut. The rest would hurt a lot more.”

“I know,” Steve says. He hasn't touched his own coffee, is simply cradling it in his hands, watching the vapor of its heat rising from the mug. “But...”

“But?” 

He shoots her a quick glance, looks back down at his drink.

“I think we would both like that,” he says.

She doesn't make a sound, because years and years of training and practice, as an assassin, as an agent, have worn down and wiped out any such dangerous reflex she had to begin with. She doesn't even move. Everything those words do, that the flush does, high on his cheekbones, happens within her; a quiet, still explosion, the blastwave of it pressing her every desire out against the walls of her self, shaking her from the inside out. 

“Yes,” she says, confirming. And, because she needs to know, because she needs to hear him say it: “What else do you think we'd both like?”

He looks at her again, and this time he doesn't glance away. He looks nervous, maybe, frightened, perhaps a little embarrassed, but he isn't backing down from what he wants, he isn't hiding. For a moment, she imagines she sees the Steve he used to be, sitting there in his chair: the scrawny, brittle kid out of faded black and white photographs, who had so much more to lose, who put himself out there, anyway, who gave his all, every single day. For a split second, she wishes she could have known him, that kid, that man. Then she thinks, _but I do._

 _I do,_ she thinks. _And I love him._

It's such a new feeling, the realization of it sudden and unknown, too large to fit within the demarcations of her skin, and it should terrify her. Given everything she's been, given all the things she's never had, she should be scared. What she feels, though, is a burning calm, the knowing she's been waiting for, a surety sharper than the focus of combat, and all she wants is to unleash it, to pierce Steve through with it and enfold him in it, to share it with him in every way he might need. It makes her feel taller, stronger, not weak but powerful. Safe.

Some of that must show on her face, because Steve smiles – a quiet, beautiful smile – and there's a shyness in it, a softness, but the fear is gone. When he answers her question, his voice is steady.

“You telling me what to do. Giving me orders. I...” She hears him swallow, sees the bob of his Adam's apple, the whiteness of his knuckles as they tighten a little too hard on his coffee mug. “That's something I think about a lot. Getting to do what you say.”

She has to shift in her seat, crossing her legs as she leans back to squeeze her thighs tight around the ache between them. She needs pressure, friction, she needs...

“Yes,” she says again. “You want to be such a good boy, don't you, Steve? You want to work so hard to please me.”

Steve lets out a breath, a hint of a whine at the edges of it, and she can't see it, but she knows that he's hard, hard enough to match the swelling of her clit, the moisture beginning to stain her panties.

“Yes, ma'm,” he says.

He's called her that before, called her that the first time they met, he's such a good little soldier, but this is different. Or perhaps this time it just means what it always should have meant. 

She wants to take him, mark him, make sure that meaning stays.

He's going to let her.

“What else?” she asks.

Steve hesitates, more emotions flickering across his face than she has words to capture, but the hesitation only lasts a second. 

“This,” he says, and gets to his feet. 

Tall and broad, standing above her, and she can feel his embarrassment when her eyes catch on the tight stretch of his pants over his groin, but he's made up his mind, she can feel that, too.

Slowly, gracefully, he drops to his knees, his hands behind his back, close enough for her to touch.

When she reaches out, he bends his head beneath her hand, the nape of his neck so warm under her palm.

“Yes,” she agrees. “Exactly this.”

* * *

She has his mouth before anything else. On her lips, on her breasts, on the throbbing heat between her thighs. There is a moment when she thinks he will come just from that, from kneeling at her feet on the kitchen floor and sucking her nipple into his mouth, from being told to suck it harder, from being made to make her moan. But he is so good, just like she's always known he would be, and when she gives him the bare sole of her foot to press up against, bearing down against the hard ridge in his slacks, he thanks her and thanks her again and grinds against it, his cheeks red, and she tells him how filthy he is and how eager and how beautiful, and he takes it and takes it and takes her nipple on his tongue, and doesn't come, because she doesn't give him permission.

She makes him bring her off twice before they even leave the kitchen, with nothing but his pretty mouth against her clit, and she is still hungry for him afterwards, still wanting so much more, but she feels steadier, in control enough for what she came here to do, centered enough not to hurt him. Not to hurt him in any way he doesn't want.

And Steve... Steve is still hard when she takes him into the bedroom, when she makes him take off his clothes and lie down for her, but she's never seen him this calm, never this at home in the world. He's sinking deeper and deeper with every command she gives him, with every well-earned word of praise when he gets things right, when he gives her just what she wants, and it's where he belongs, there's no mistaking that. As far down as she can take him, existing only to serve, and he looks... When she tells him to reach his hands over his head and clutch the headboard, when she tells him not to move, when she settles astride him, naked, with the knife in her hand, she thinks, for the first time since she's known him, that he looks happy.

It's almost blinding, that look on him.

To have the power to put it there is the greatest high she's ever known. 

His cock is caught beneath her body, pressed flat against his belly, and she drags her pussy along the length of it, rubs her still-hard clit against his heat, reaches down to part her wet folds with her fingers, letting him slide between them, the length of his dick teasing her opening with the promise of fullness, with the knowledge of more to come than she's ever had. His eyes widen, watching her, as if the sight of her touching herself is almost painful, and she fingers herself a little longer, leaning into the pleasure of it to make sure he sees, make sure he knows how good it feels. He breathes her name, and his cock spills clear moisture over his stomach, his perfect abs trembling, glistening with it. 

She leans forward, hand on his chest, to nip at his ear.

“Oh,” she says, “you like that. I should chain you up some time, make you watch while I make myself come, again and again. Would you beg to do it for me, Steve?”

“Yes, ma'm,” he says, immediate. “Please, if you teach me to do it well enough...”

She smiles, a grin against his cheek, because oh. Yes.

“You already did so well,” she tells him. “You made me feel so good. And it's going to feel even better, having you inside me.” She rolls her hips, makes him feel it, too, how close they are to it, how wet she is, ready to have him. He groans, bucking up against her. “Taking my pleasure from this thick, gorgeous cock of yours.” She closes her eyes, breathes him in. Grazes her teeth along the line of his jaw. “I want to hurt you while you're inside me,” she says, as if telling a secret. It almost startles her, how true it is, how badly she craves it. “I want to ride your pain along with your pleasure and watch you give it all up to me. Mark you in every way I can. So that you don't forget, so that you remember who you are, where you belong.”

He makes a sound that is almost a sob, desperate, so lovely.

“Please,” he says again. “Please, Natasha, please.”

“Shush,” she says, leaning back, trailing her fingers over his lips. He turns into them, chasing them with his tongue. Her other hand still has the knife, pressed against his chest. She shifts it, lets him feel the presence of the edge. He goes still, so very still, waiting. “Yes,” she says. “That's it, soldier. Don't move.”

He's stretched out for her, every muscle taut, his body open, vulnerable. She's hurt so many people, broken them, snapped the threads of their lives with her bare hands, with knives just like the one she's holding now, but there's nothing in this man beneath her but trust. There's always been trust, from the first day on the helicarrier, from the first fight on the streets of New York, never a moments hesitation about her judgment, her strength, her intentions. She doesn't quite understand why, when her file must have told him every wrong she's committed, but he's never doubted her, never feared her. There's only ever been this, waiting to blossom into what he's giving her now, this perfect moment of faith.

She sets the knife against the pink edge of the fading scar she made before, and slices down. Not as deep as the original cut, just enough to break through all the layers of his skin, but it's beautiful, the way his flesh opens, the way his blood spills over in the wake of her blade, a thin line of red spreading outwards, ink on wet paper. He doesn't move, but she hears his breathing go ragged, shallow and quick. He stays hard beneath the weight of her body, all the way through.

She can't stop herself, then, needs it too much, with an almost brutal hunger. She lays the knife aside on the mattress and rises up on her knees, takes hold of Steve's cock to guide it inside her.

He fills her, so completely, a stretch almost too wide, and she has to take a moment to simply sink down on him, to breathe as he bottoms out inside her, pressed all the way up against that deepest point where touch borders on more uncomfortable than good. There's nothing inside her that he doesn't reach, and when she tightens her muscles around him, she thinks she could come from this, just from this fullness, just from having him _there_.

Or maybe that's seeing her mark on him, the trickle of blood, seeing his head tip back in perfect surrender. 

There are tremors running the length of his body, his muscles twitching with the effort to keep still. She lays her hands on his chest, drags her palms over the stiffened peaks of his nipples. Lets her nails sink, just a little, into the flat planes of his pecs.

He arches beneath her, hips bucking up as if he's trying to somehow push further inside her, as if all of him could be lost and held and cradled within her, and she wants that, she does, wants him to forget, for even this moment, that there is anything in this world he needs to think of but her, any duties beyond pleasing her, any responsibilities beyond what she gives him. She wants to cut his mind free of every painful thought and burn every sorrow out of him, every loss and regret, wants to tear him apart, strip by strip, until there's nothing left but the certainty of his place, the truth of who he is, of who will care for him, who will keep him safe from harm and give him everything he's never dared ask from anyone else.

She runs her hand down towards the wound she made, the edge of her palm skirting the bloody length of it. Presses down – near it, not on it, but he still lets out a hiss, his eyes snapping back to her.

She wants to devour him.

“Do you want more?” she asks. “Steve? Do you want the rest?”

He said yes, before, but she needs to hear it again, needs to make sure she's working on more than her own desires. She can't get this wrong for him.

He looks... Somehow he looks earnest, blue-eyed and determined, that fragile, stubborn kid again, so strong, so certain about the things that truly matter, and he says:

“Yes, ma'm. Please, ma'am, don't stop.”

And she surges forward to kiss him, grab his hair and claim his mouth, and he moans into her, into the way she has to move on his cock to reach him, and she can feel his arms spasm, fighting the urge to touch her, can feel him stay put, just like she said. 

“Good,” she tells him, soothing, stroking his hair to quiet him down from the kiss, for what's to come. “Such a good boy.”

He shudders, all over. It's enough to make her heart ache.

She reaches for the jar she's placed on the nightstand, the glass container she brought with her in her pocket next to the knife, hoping. Sea salt. She sits back, starts to screw the lid open.

Steve is watching her with such intensity.

“It's all right,” she says. “Try to breathe.”

He gives a weak laugh, amused at his own expense.

“Easier said than done, ma'm,” he says. But he loosens his white-knuckled grip on the headboard and flexes circulation back into his fingers before wrapping them around the wooden bars again.

“Oh, I think you have it covered, soldier,” she says, smiling, and rewards him with a slow rise and fall of her hips.

Soft, gentle pleasure, for the both of them, her body sliding wet around him. The friction is smooth and tight, so sweet, and she can't help but moan with it, let it drive her for a long, silken minute, the ache for more of it, the breathless joy every time she moves, each time it courses through her.

Steve makes a small _oh_ sound, almost like surprise, his gaze traveling over her as if he can't decide where to look, as if he can't bear to miss any of it – the slippery stretch of her pussy where he disappears into her, the heavy sway of her breasts with every roll of her hips, the expression on her face. Her hands, still holding the salt. He keeps coming back to that.

She slips the lid off the container and pours some of the contents into the palm of her hand, sets the rest aside. The salt is coarse, its grains large and uneven, rough against her skin when she tests them with her thumb. Her heart picks up speed.

She could do this more sensibly, could do it cleaner, certainly would if Steve wasn't who he is. But there is nothing she wants to do to him that his supersoldier body won't heal, and she is willing to trade caution for immediacy, for the raw press of her bare hand against skin, against bared flesh beneath. She thinks perhaps she's never met another person who needs that more than Steve: to be reached, all the way through, as though he can't quite shake the feel of the ice around him, as though he's begging for someone to shatter it, to break through. As though he's waiting for the world to be real.

She wants to give him that, that connection. She's willing to cut as deep as it takes.

She lays her hand against his side, turns it, palm downwards, to cover the wound from her knife. The salt pours into it. Mixes with the blood that's already stopped flowing, sinks through the tear in Steve's skin. He jerks, gasping, his body spasming against the sting, the headboard creaking under the strain of his pull. Inside her, his cock jumps, pressing against the squeeze of her, impossibly thicker, harder.

She pushes her hand down, strokes it along the length of the cut, and back again. There is the slippery wetness of blood, and, in it, the grit of salt scraping her palm. Scraping the open wound as she rubs it in, rubs it into him.

Steve groans, a sound of pure pain, and she looks up at his face, at the tension in it, at his teeth digging into the pink of his bottom lip, hard enough to bite through.

“Don't hold it in,” she says. “You're doing so well. I want to hear you.”

Her own voice sounds broken, low and greedy. Not quite her, but a creature of lust and possession, a predator made up of teeth and control and savage affection, unshakable. Perhaps entirely her, the only truth that matters.

“Natasha, please,” Steve says, and it's a whine, a sob, but he isn't pleading to get away.

He's straining upwards, towards her, hips stuttering as if he wants, helplessly, to fuck into her, but doesn't know whether he's allowed, back arcing as if he's trying to shove himself into her hand, into the pain, asking for it, asking for what she gives.

“Yes,” she tells him. “Go on, take it,” and she pushes harder, rubs circles over the wound, the salt dragging through it, cutting into its edges, grinding in beneath the skin. “It's going to scar so beautifully,” she says, and the words slam into her with the same force as Steve's cock, hitting home as he nearly lifts her off the bed, convulsing, crying out, perfect in his climax, and she prays that she's right, that the abrasion will allow the scar to stay, long enough for Steve to treasure it, revel in it, feel her mark on him as something that will last, something that won't leave him, that he can't escape.

She lets her fingers clench, because she can, because he won't deny her, allows her nails to bear down on broken skin. The sound Steve makes, the way his eyes fly open, blown wide and drugged with pain, with naked reverence, is enough to tip her over, her pussy closing tight around him, holding him there as she comes, as he spills inside her, as her heart expands and her breathing stalls and all she can think is that he's hers now, is that there is nothing she won't do to keep him, keep him safe.

When she tells him he is free to move, he rolls them over, buries his face in her neck. She's almost lost, wrapped in his huge body, but he is the one who feels small, curled up against her, around her, not letting go, even when sleep begins to take him. She stays awake, listening to his breathing, to the pendulum clock down the hall, and she wonders if he'll know, in the morning, that this was real, this fragile moment, this beginning. Wonders if the ache in his side, the scar in the mirror, will be enough for him to trust. 

She strokes his hair, holding him closer. 

If it isn't, she still has her knife.


End file.
